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What Are You Drinking on Thanksgiving?

What Are You Drinking on Thanksgiving?

Ginger beer on the table, sparkling apple cider for the toast, and ice-cold mineral water within reach of whoever is carving. That is my answer, and it beats agonizing over a wine list. A Thanksgiving plate holds turkey, buttery potatoes, sage stuffing, cranberry sauce, and a square of sweet potato, all touching. Wine flatters one of those at a time. Bubbles and a little spice handle the whole plate.
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The Office Fridge Glow-Up: A Workplace Beverage Bar Your Team Will Raid

The Office Fridge Glow-Up: A Workplace Beverage Bar Your Team Will Raid

Employees who are back in the office want drinks that do something for them: sparkling water with real flavor, cold caffeine for the afternoon slump, recovery drinks for the lunchtime gym crowd, and a few classic sodas for the loyalists. The winning formula is a small, well-chosen lineup bought by the case and delivered on a recurring schedule, so the fridge never goes empty on a Tuesday at 3 p.m.
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Bottle as Art: The Best-Designed Waters to Leave Out on the Counter

Bottle as Art: The Best-Designed Waters to Leave Out on the Counter

Every good kitchen has one object that earns its spot on the counter without doing much. A bowl of lemons. A copper kettle that mostly gets admired. A cutting board propped against the backsplash for no reason other than it looks right there. A well-designed bottle of water can do the same job, and it has one advantage over the lemons: people use it. Leave a gallon jug on the counter, and it reads as clutter. Leave a sculpted glass bottle there, and it reads as a choice. Plus, the water inside gets drunk instead of forgotten in the back of the fridge. So which bottles deserve the real estate? We looked at the waters on our shelves the way an interior designer looks at a lamp: silhouette first, then color, then how the glass handles light. Four stood out.
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Bottled Iced Tea, Ranked: Just Ice Tea, Snapple & Saranac for the Cold-Brew Crowd

Bottled Iced Tea, Ranked: Just Ice Tea, Snapple & Saranac for the Cold-Brew Crowd

The tea aisle used to be simple. Lipton on one shelf, Snapple on the other, and a store brand nobody bought unless it was on sale. Now you can spend ten minutes standing in front of a cooler at Beverage Universe deciding between six flavors of the same brand before you even get to comparing brands against each other. That's a good problem to have, but it's still a problem if you're the one filling the office fridge or stocking up for a family that argues about sweet tea versus unsweetened. This guide skips the marketing copy and gets into what sets Just Ice Tea, Snapple, and Saranac apart. Three different companies, three different ideas about what a bottled tea should taste like, and three very different answers to the question of how much sugar belongs in your afternoon drink.
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The Grown-Up Drinks Cart, Booze-Free: Building It With Fever-Tree, Fresca & Citrus

The Grown-Up Drinks Cart, Booze-Free: Building It With Fever-Tree, Fresca & Citrus

More people are skipping alcohol at parties than they were five years ago, and hosts are catching up more slowly than their guests. If your idea of a non-alcoholic option is a warm can of seltzer parked next to the wine, you're not offering a drink. You're offering an apology. A real bar cart, booze-free or not, gives people something worth reaching for, something that took a little thought instead of a last-minute grocery run. The good news is you don't need a bartending course to pull this off. Three brands do most of the work: Fever-Tree for mixers with real backbone, Fresca for citrus that tastes like citrus, and Schweppes for the classics that never needed fixing. Put them together with some fresh fruit and ice, and you've got a cart that holds its own next to the actual liquor.
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The Gift of Good Water: Why a Water-of-the-Month Club Is the Sleeper Luxury Present

The Gift of Good Water: Why a Water-of-the-Month Club Is the Sleeper Luxury Present

Buy a bottle of wine for the person who has everything, and you're competing with their cellar. Buy them a gadget, and it's obsolete by spring. Buy them a candle and, well, you already know how that story ends. Water is different. Everybody drinks it, nobody thinks to upgrade it, and once someone tastes the difference between tap and a glass-bottled spring water from a source three thousand miles away, they notice. That's the opening the Top Shelf Water of the Month Club from Beverage Universe is built for. It's a strange gift on paper and a smart one in practice, especially for the New Yorker who already owns the wine club membership, the coffee subscription, and the standing reservation at every place worth going.
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